The 28-day rule: what happens after you send a pet request

You have sent the request. Now there is a clock running, and it helps to know exactly what it measures, because most of the bad advice about this section is about what happens when it stops.

This guide covers England only. The pet provisions of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 do not extend to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Day zero

The clock starts on the date of your request. That is why the request should be in writing, dated, and sent in a way you can prove: an email with the date in it, or a letter you have a copy of. A conversation at a viewing does not start anything.

The request needs to identify the animal clearly and to be a request for consent to keep it at the property. It does not need to cite the Act, but a request that does is harder to treat as a casual enquiry. The template does that for you.

Days one to twenty-eight

Your landlord must give or refuse consent in writing on or before the 28th day after the date of the request, and must not refuse unreasonably. Both halves matter. A verbal yes is welcome but is not what the Act asks for, and a written no with no reasons is a written answer that will struggle to look reasonable later.

During this window a landlord can do two things that legitimately move the deadline:

Ask you for more information. If they reasonably ask for further information about the pet within the 28 days, the deadline moves to the 7th day after you provide it. So answer quickly, in writing, and note the date you sent it. A slow reply to a fair question is the one way a tenant can stall their own request.

Ask a superior landlord. If keeping the pet would need the consent of someone above your landlord, typically a freeholder under a head lease, and they ask that person within the 28 days, the deadline moves to the 7th day after they get an answer. What that looks like in practice is here.

Diary the date 28 days out on the day you send the request. Then diary any new date the moment one of those two things happens.

Day twenty-nine

This is the part to read twice. If the deadline passes with no written answer, you do not have consent. The Act contains no deemed consent. Silence past the deadline is a failure of your landlord’s duty, which gives you grounds to complain and to escalate, but it does not conjure permission out of nothing, and moving the animal in on the strength of a missed deadline converts a strong position into a breach of your tenancy.

What you do instead:

1. Write again, briefly. Refer to the original request and its date, note that the 28 days have passed, and ask for a written answer within a short, specific period. Keep it polite. You are building a record of a reasonable tenant asking a fair question.
2. If there is a letting agent, use their complaints procedure. Agents in England must belong to a redress scheme, and the scheme is the route if the agent will not answer.
3. Get free advice. Shelter and Citizens Advice both help renters in England and will tell you honestly how strong your position is.
4. Keep the animal out until you have consent in writing. However unfair the delay feels, this is the one rule that protects everything else you have done right.

A refusal inside the deadline

A written refusal is an answer, and the question becomes whether it is reasonable. Nobody has litigated that line yet, because the section is new, so anyone claiming certainty is guessing. What is not a guess is that a blanket policy applied without looking at your request is close to the definition of not considering it. What to do with a refusal is a guide of its own.

What cannot be a condition

Whatever answer comes back, your landlord cannot require you to take out pet insurance and cannot take a larger deposit. The insurance clause was removed from the Bill before it passed, and deposits were already capped. A consent that arrives with either condition attached is worth a polite reply pointing that out. The detail is here.

Where a paid letter fits

None of the above needs a product. The free template starts the clock as well as anything we sell. The Landlord Pet Request Kit fills that letter with your details, calculates the 28-day date for you, and adds a one-page Pet CV, for £49. Use whichever suits you; the timeline is the same.